The Compound Effect

What’s The Compound Effect?

It’s been widely documented, I really like business. What is also known is that I am sucker for knowledge. Can you ever know too much? What many of you don’t know is that I am also a spiritual person and do believe in God, karma and many universal principles. What I mean by that is that things like “what goes around comes around” and “thinking positive” and “think big” are part of my everyday routine. The continuous education that I so publicly subscribe to is not just business related, it relates to me as a person and what and who I want to be. I’ve been busy in the self improvement arena for some 20+ years.

During my last bootcamp that my coach James Malinchak facilitated I had the extraordinary opportunity to meet someone who made a huge impression on me. As you know I meet a lot of people. A lot of great, smart people but this man stood out even from that great group. His name is Darren Hardy.

Here are my Cliff notes from the event for you to take advantage of and hopefully get a glimpse at how good and powerful this man is.

Darren opened the talk by stating that he’s a little tired of the ‘quick rich’ and ‘happy and slim overnight’ schemes. There is no way you can loose 30 pounds in two weeks and there is no way you become an overnight millionaire either. He went on to describe that he likes to use adult language like: commitment, persistence and accountability and also four letter words like hard, work and love. Now that got my attention.

The big truth is that marketing gimmicks don’t work. While there often is some truth to a system or a process very rarely does something work overnight. That’s true for finding happiness and of course stands for success as well. Darren gave the audience the truth straight up: “Earning success is a process.”

Now I have to be honest with you. I’ve been on the fence. My own history shows that I am a 13 year overnight success. I worked harder than anyone I know for longer than anyone I know and I got rewarded with way more than anyone I know (I am referring to people directly around me not everyone I know or associate with.) But here is the but. Before I started this new photography coaching business last year I invested a lot of time and money to learn from people who make money in this economy. A lot of them are big internet marketers. And they use words like easy, free, success, secrets and we are to avoid words like work, hard and learning. Why? Because in today’s time people want things fast. We live in a world of instant gratification. The entitlement generation that we raised has a hard time understanding the principles of success that do include hard work and determination.

That has led me to an internal conflict. I’ve been since walking a fine line between using language that sounds enticing but not fake and between delivering a message that comes from my heart but doesn’t sound unachievable. When I heard Darren speak I wanted to get up and hug him and thank him for liberating me. Yes, it’s true. Success is work. Big success is a lot of work. There is no way around it.

With that confession out of the way allow me share a few more highlights from the presentation. By the way, I do want you to invest in this book which Darren and James made available to all of us. I read it on my VACATION cover to cover mumbling, this is so good – it’s so true. The link is at the bottom of the page.

In essence a compound effect pertains to all the little things that you do or don’t do that compound over time. Let me give you an example. If you eat a bag of chips every night it’s not going to be a big deal for the first week or even the first month. But over time you will gain weight. If you replace these chips with celery sticks you might not see a difference for the same time or even longer but over time you will loose weight. The same is to be said with what you do with your business. Those few calls you didn’t feel like making today are no big deal today. At the end of the week you have compounded 5 days x 3 missed calls. That’s already 15 calls this week and 60 missed called this month and 720 missed call this year. Are you getting this? Let’s do it the other way around. Let’s say you make an additional 3 calls each day because we are in a slow economy and you need to offset this somehow… you are making an extra 720 calls this year. Do you think that this compounds your results in your business Darren says that small changes and poor choices have both a big effect over time.

What should you do? First of all of course read the book. Second this is as good of a time as ever to pay attention to your good and bad habits. We don’t need to point them out, you KNOW what they are. Make those small changes that will compound to your desired results. In a way it’s even easier that way because small changes are so doable. If you are addicted to instant gratification you’ll feel short term gain but long term pain. I’d like you to compound major long term success and gain!

In closing I’ll tell you one of the most powerful things he said. What successful and unsuccessful people have in common is that they both hate to do what it takes. But successful people do it anyway.